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Design of 3-dimensional Textured Organic Solar Cells

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2011

Kanwar Singh Nalwa  and
Sumit Chaudhary
Kanwar Singh Nalwa
Affiliation:
ksnalwa@iastate.edu, Iowa State University, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ames, Iowa, United States
Sumit Chaudhary
Affiliation:
sumitc@iastate.edu, Iowa State University, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ames, Iowa, United States
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Abstract

Organic materials are attractive for photovoltaics primarily because of the prospect of high throughput solution-processible manufacturing using roll-to-roll or spray deposition. In the formation of polymer based photovoltaic devices, the aspect that limits the power conversion efficiency is the bottleneck between short diffusion lengths of the excited states (excitons) in polymers, in the range of 10-20 nm. Optical absorption length, which is in the range of 50-200 nm and much larger than the exciton diffusion length, poses the limit on charge generation and collection. It is important to achieve complete optical absorption in active layers much thinner than optical absorption length to minimize losses due to recombination of charge carriers. Previously, light trapping techniques have been coupled with organic solar cell but without significant success. In this paper, three-dimensional sub micron grating structure is analyzed using finite element method (FEM) simulations for finding the optical absorption in different layers of solar cell to optimize the photonic concentrator effect of the grating structure. The energy dissipation of electromagnetic field in the active layer is studied as a function of active layer thickness, grating pitch and height. The superiority of grating structure in terms of light trapping feature as compared to planar geometry is clearly demonstrated by simulation results.

Keywords

photovoltaicpolymersemiconducting
Type
Research Article
Information
MRS Online Proceedings Library (OPL) , Volume 1168: Symposium P – Three-Dimensional Architectures for Energy Generation and Storage , 2009 , 1168-P05-17
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2009

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